I’m still moving right along with the Decluttering challenges, and I’ve made it through most of January and February. I still haven’t created a household notebook/binder. Maybe I’m still thinking that I’ll find the one I had, and I still have some dishes, cups, and mugs to declutter for February. However, the progress that I’ve made is immense.

In January, I was able to clear a counter, and after a month, it still remains clean (at least once a week :).

I also organized our cabinets. The one with the spices definitely showed the most improvement.

I’ve been making runs to the Dollar Tree where I can pick up little plastic containers that I’ve been using all around the house to help keep things organized. I love that I don’t have to spend a lot to help stay organized.

February was all about organizing recipes and coupons, meal planning, and recycling. My biggest accomplishments were getting my recipes organized because most of my recipes are on Pinterest. Before, they were all crammed onto the one board. Now, there are numerous boards categorized by the main ingredient or type of dish, and I’ve put all the recipes I’ve tried and liked onto a “Tried and True” board.

My husband also created a meal plan for the month, shopping lists for each week included! I recently saw a post about using dollar store picture frames, where you put a calendar or just white paper into the frame, and then write on the glass with a dry erase marker, just like you would a dry erase board. I wanted to give it a try, but I didn’t have the right markers for it, making it difficult to see.

You get the idea, though. In the end, I decided to order a cheap calendar white board from Amazon, complete with fine-tipped dry erase markers. That should make it much easier.

Won’t you join in decluttering this year? It’s turning out to be very rewarding, and it makes cleaning much easier, not to mention making just living in the house easier since everything has a place where it’s suppose to be. This may be the usual thing for your house, but it’s not for ours…so it’s been nice. Let me know how your decluttering is going, and if you haven’t started or don’t know where to start, Home-Storage-Solutions-101.com gives simple missions with directions for each.

I am a bit of a pack rat…and a bit oblivious to messes. That’s not to say that I don’t like things to be clean. I just think there’s a lot of other things, sometimes more important things, that I’d rather be doing than cleaning. Of course, with two kids, things quickly get out of hand, and the house is wrecked.

Around the New Year, someone shared a link to a Declutter 365 calendar, so I decided to give it a try.

January is all about the kitchen, so I’ve been working on the “missions” to get the kitchen straightened up and decluttered. One of the first challenges was to get the counters as empty as possible, which for us, was a HUGE challenge that required cleaning cabinets, reorganizing the pantry, and shuffling things around to different drawers and shelves. Doing all of these things actually completed the missions for other days, so I haven’t been doing them in order by any means. They’re also supposed to take about 15 minutes, but most of them have been requiring more time than that. I generally do several of them on the weekends or maybe one or two during the week while I’m cooking dinner. Now, I’m proud to say that we have a clear counter and a mostly clear kitchen table, and every night or so, I make sure to clear them off again so that they stay that way and don’t get out of hand.

It’s been lovely to have prepping space, a space to put grocery bags while I put things away, and a place for all of us to actually eat dinner together!

As for the decluttering part, although the kitchen didn’t have a lot of things to get rid of, these challenges have definitely made the kitchen an easier place to cook and eat in, which is great.

If you feel like your house is always out of sorts or that you could just stand to get rid of some stuff, then consider trying Declutter 365. There are links on the calendar that provide details, tips, and information for almost every mission. Breaking everything into tiny tasks makes it more manageable, and you don’t have to do the missions on the exact day they’re listed. I just print out the calendar and X them out as I finish them. My goal is to finish most by the end of each month. Will you join me?